[gdl]

A large part of the issue is that many major copyright owners have proven themselves to have very little regard for law or morality themselves. When the RIAA blackmails people (with very little evidence against them) and forces them to pay a few thousand dollars for a settlement or be sued into oblivion by a battalion of corporate lawyers, the masses will hardly defend the RIAA. Or when they try to write laws to spy on and censor the entire Internet for their direct gain, many people get very upset at the implications. When game publishers sell games that are so heavily DRM'd as to be difficult to play legitimately while still trivial to pirate, people shrug and get the pirated copies if they want to be able to play.

On the other hand, there have been lots of stories where creators have open discussions with pirates, without reflexively making them the enemy, and are rewarded by respect and increased sales. Pirates are people too, and many act with a higher moral compass than you might expect, though it may differ from your own.

I think it's not so much that piracy is seen as good, but that it's not as evil as some would make it out to be, and the other side makes themselves so unsymphathetic that nobody cares about them.